


in another life

by jonphaedrus



Category: Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 02:02:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1670633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>zelgius dies.</p>
<p>sephiran lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in another life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rethira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rethira/gifts).



> sephiran resets the timeline is the not as dramatic summary for this fic. written to vienna teng's "another life". i am a bad person.

how many tries do you get? how many chances? if you could wish for one thing, would you wish for more tries?

 

he makes it almost all the way through his first one. it isn’t the longest, but it nearly is. in this one, he dies alone and cold on a stone floor, with the one child of his blood he counted as a child crying into his chest, begging, begging, begging for him to wake up.

 

the second time, he survives. he survives the floor, he survives her crying, he survives another thousand years before he can’t do it any more. he just can’t. there’s nothing left for him to fight for. how hard is it, to force yourself to stay alive? to just keep waking up, day after day. his bed is always cold. his descendants do not even remember the names of their ancestors, who he knew and loved. it’s too much.

 

after that, they just get shorter. it’s so easy to run away, when he knows what will happen. he’s been all the way to the end—where he’s broken and shattered, inside and out, and he misses a man with dark, navy hair and large, kind hands more than he knows how to say. it’s so much easier to just not have to get that far.

 

why not do something else? it’s so, so easy to just run away. to push altina and her knowing smile aside before he falls to them. to refuse to let deghinsea bring him back from the tenth, hundredth time. to let ashera destroy the world, when he fears not what will come.

 

he isn’t afraid of anything, because he knows how it ends. there’s no other way it ends.

 

it ends with him alive, and zelgius dead.

 

he gives into temptation eventually. it’s so easy to fall into old habits. he _misses_ zelgius, with an intrinsic, heavy part of his body. he starts with tastes, never enough before he starts over. meets him once. touches him once. kisses him once. beds him once.

 

he gets closer and closer to the end every single time.

 

it ends with him alive, and zelgius dead. that is how ashunera has decided it will be, that is how the chips will fall. zelgius dies for him, and sephiran, as always, survives. he can run all he wants. he can try every other opportunity.

 

zelgius always dies.

 

not always at the same times, no. sometimes he dies earlier—in a collapsing building, in a failed duel, killed by a reckless lion, drowned. sometimes he dies later—of his injuries, of a broken heart, of an accident, of old age.

 

zelgius dies.

 

sephiran lives.

 

and so he tries again, hoping. just once, he hopes. he will die, and zelgius will live.

 

zelgius dies.

 

sephiran lives.

 


End file.
